Power Edit has a reputation as a pure programmer's editor and the rep appears to be justified. You can use Power Edit as a general writing tool, but then you just wouldn't see the program's true power. I reviewed Power Edit, writing and research documents firmly in hand, but also asked contributing reviewer Mark Goldstein (who's a programmer) to have a look at it and put it to daily use for a few weeks.

As my good friend Paul Rochford of Techspertise repeatedly states to anyone who'll listen, "Dreamweaver and FrontPage suck! Real web developers use a powerful text editor to do all their programming!" Paul is correct to a significant extent. The cleanest web page code you'll find is usually that which is produced by a decent programmer working with suitable editor. Clean HTML, PHP and jscript often results in web pages that load faster and offer greater browser compatibility. Certainly as well, combining various methods in order to accomplish different web site development tasks, effects and so on means that web developers are usually better off learning how to code manually rather than relying on the complex workflows involved in getting Dreamweaver, FrontPage and GoLive to perform multidisciplinary programming tasks. For application programmers working in C++, VBScript and other common programming languages, a good quality editing program is frequently the difference between a positive, productive day and a really bad one. Obviously in most situations, coding talent wins the day. Combine the talent—even novice efforts—with a competent editor and good things can happen.

We installed Power Edit on several different workstations and laptops. We gave it a good workout in everything from Windows 98SE through XP. We did not have a chance to try it in Windows Vista (RC2). The Power Edit installer is tiny—3MB or so—and the program installs in less than a minute. The installation includes a nice selection of clip lists (commands, tags and so on that you can copy & paste from the clip list sidebar), and a robust and speedy spell checker. The supplied spell checker installs automatically along with the main program. The spell checker is as limited as you'd expect it to be considering its association with a programmer's editor. There are additional free spell check databases which can be downloaded from the product web site and they really help to fatten the basic database into something quite useful.

The clip list is similar to other such lists found in
competing editors. The HTML list is literally an extensive
list of HTML tags which can be quickly copied and pasted
into your code. With the cursor properly positioned, hit
the keyboard shortcut to focus the clip list, use the arrow
keys to select the required tag, then hit the Enter key
to make the tag appear at the cursor. It's a simple system
and reduces or completely eliminates an enormous number
of common coding errors.

Power
Edit has very few size limits. Editing multiple files
containing long lines is part of the basic feature set.
The file list is tabbed at the top of the main program
window which makes it easy to navigate with either the
mouse or via keyboard shortcut. The file window can be
split vertically or horizontally to provide two different
views of a file—very handy.

Power Edit contains all the usual features expected of
text editors and several that are unique. The search and
replace function is especially powerful, including regular
expression handling as well as soundex and approximate
searches, which are found in few if any other editors.
In addition, the program includes many text manipulation
functions which are difficult to find elsewhere, such as
removal of leading spaces, position-based text deletion,
deletion of blank lines and extraction of e-mail addresses
and Internet URLs.

Cons: The
spell checker is speedy because it's quite compact, and
that means the word list is comparatively small. Where
TextPad is clearly a tool which works equally well for
writers and programmers, Power Edit is in our opinion much
more focused on programmers. That's not
actually a 'Con', but it's worth noting nonetheless.
I get nervous when an editing program fails to display
an indicator of some sort during a Save. Despite Power
Edit's power, the product web site looks like a bit like
a refugee from 1994, which is not a great recommendation
for what happens to be a very good code editor.

Pros: Power Edit programmer Glenn Alcott has wisely developed
his software without extraneous junk, resulting in a
very fast little editor. Despite the 'Con' about the
spell checking, it works properly. It's hard to ignore
the built-in Thesaurus (for programmers who want to write
intelligible comments possibly?) which also has a somewhat
limited vocabulary. Nevertheless, it's there and quite
useful, so prose and letter writers who need help in
that area can also put PowerEdit to good use. Long time
readers of Kickstartnews reviews are well aware of my
personal view that formal word processors are really
not the best tool for active writers, and especially
not those writers who regularly produce copy for web
sites, presentations and a thousand other sorts of projects
where page layout is superfluous or otherwise ill-advised.
Give me a competent text editor (with robust spell checking)
any day—PowerEdit is
another fine choice. Alcott continues to do a thoughtful
and effective job of developing and supporting the software.
The vertical and horizontal split file views are neat and
allow you to quickly review various parts of your work
without losing your place or even having to refer to line
numbers. Power Edit v2.2 is fast and the editing window
is as clean as anything we've seen. Code formatting features
abound (justification, centering, line inversion, etc.,
etc.), so serious programmers of all types should find
a use for this one. Anybody who is still fighting with
Windows Notepad or Wordpad needs to stop right now. There
have been superior alternatives for years and Power Edit
is also one of the lowest cost serious choices we've seen.
Power Edit v2.2 was perfectly stable—rock solid actually—in
over two months of regular use. Highly recommended.